Anso hunched over the machina, furiously trying to finish the assignment given him by the Abbot. The sound of the keys clattering echoed from across the deserted scriptorium. At this rate he was going to be late to the audience with the Cardinal. But this work could not wait.

Anso had based his design for the machina on a pipe organ, with a keydesk for entering numbers and letters and foot pedals for punctuation symbols. He was able to copy manuscripts much faster this way than by quill and ink. Already he was a third of the way through Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and the finished manuscript would take up a small fraction of the space that the codex did, encoded as it would be in small holes punched into sheets of vellum.

Marsilius Cardinal had inspected the machina very carefully and shown a great deal of interest in its workings during his last visit to the monestery. Anso would soon have a complete manuscript to show to His Eminence, and then perhaps he could tell of his more ambitious plan.